Last night, I retweeted an image that rubbed me the wrong way.
It showed three kids who were handcuffed by undercover cops for criminal activity.
And what was their crime? Were they picking pockets? Beating up tourists? Slashing tires?
Nope, none of those things. Instead, they were (gasp!!) selling water to thirsty people. And they didn’t have a piece of paper from the government giving them permission to participate in voluntary exchange. Oh, the horror.
And everyone knows that selling water without a license is a gateway drug to the ultimate underage crime of operating an unlicensed lemonade stand. Or maybe even shoveling snow, cutting grass, or selling worms without government approval!
Here’s the original tweet.
This really sums up why libertarians don’t like government. All too often, it’s the unfair application of force against innocent behavior.
This episode of government thuggery has received a surprising amount of coverage. Here are some excerpts from a story by U.S. News & World Report.
Police handcuffed three teenagers Thursday evening for attempting to selling water without a permit on the National Mall.Photos tweeted by passerby Tim Krepp, a tour guide and writer, show three plainclothes U.S. Park Police officers detaining the three African-American teens near the Mall’s Smithsonian Castle, located between the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.
The good news is that the kids weren’t actually arrested.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Park Police, Sgt. Anna Rose, confirms three teenagers were detained for vending without a license, but says she feels “this has gotten blown out of proportion.” The three teens, ages 16 and 17, were detained for “illegally selling water” but were not charged, Rose says. They were held until their parents arrived. A fourth individual was immediately released after officers determined he was uninvolved, she says.
If you click on Mr. Krepp’s tweet and read the comments, you’ll notice some discussion of whether white kids would have been treated the same way.
I don’t like to assume racism without real evidence, so my default assumption is that the cops were primarily motivated by a desire to fill their quota and have some proof that they weren’t goofing off.
But it’s also worth noting that the over-criminalization of society creates opportunities for bad people in government to target minorities (or other groups that fall into disfavor). And if it’s danger to ride a train while black, then it’s also possible that it’s risky to sell water while black.
The broader lesson is that it’s a good idea to have fewer laws. And the laws that do exist should be designed to protect people from external aggression. Especially given the horror stories that are produced by the alternative approach.
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I have had similar run-ins with the police in my past. At one house I lived, I put a for sale sign in the window of my car in front of my house. They gave me a ticket for “parked for purpose of sale”. Then I removed the sign. The next day they ticketed it again for “parked the wrong direction on the street” (couldn’t have informed me of that the day before). Then I had another car in the street, and they ticketed it for “not having an inspection sticker”. I pointed out that the car was an antique, and therefore didn’t require one. They said oops. Then, since I lived next to a drainage ditch- which was overgrown with weeds, they encroached into my yard. So they gave me a ticket for “weeds over six inches tall” in my yard. This was a new house, and I had not yet done the landscaping. Then, they decided to put a fence along the drainage ditch. It was only 3 feet tall, and my dog thought it was a good spring board for escape- he could clear it on the run. So, of course they next ticketed me for “dog at large”. The judge threw that one out- but not before I was subpoenaed, and then charged with “failure to appear”. Upon which they showed up at my house with a warrant for my arrest and told me I could either come willingly or not (in which case they offered to cuff me). After following them to the police shop, they had to FRISK me before I could enter to be “processed”. So, they put me up against an exterior wall and told me to “assume the position”. A lady and her child were coming down the street at the time and crossed to the other side to avoid any conflict with a criminal while they patted down this derelict. This for failure to appear for dog at large! Which – again – was thrown out by the judge.
To make matters even worse, I found a drunk on the road one day- weaving and all- and I followed him to his house- about a block from the police department. He hit the side walls on his drive a couple of times on the way in. I went to the cop shop to tell them what I had witnessed, and they told me that they couldn’t do anything unless he was still on the road and they could see him in the act. I offered myself as a witness, and to press charges. They said they were not interested.
I moved as soon as I could.
So, do you think I like our police state much? I figure its just like the cops in my home town- it was the kids everybody else made fun of in school, and now that they are cops, they are able to exact their vengeance with the authority vested in them by our state, “to serve and protect”. Of course, I can see why the world needs to be protected from a guy who lets weeds grow in his yard, lets his dog loose, tries to sell cars in the street, parks them the wrong direction, and doesn’t show up in court for such heinous acts.
The problem is that most of us cannot get through even a week without in some way committing some sort of offense. The laws are numerous. And don’t even get me started about homeowner associations and school boards- where the ones who didn’t become police go to satisfy their need to tell others what to do.
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